A candid analysis of the 25-year-old ``troubles'' in Northern Ireland, from the inception of the Provisional IRA in December 1968 to the ceasefires of 1994. Stevenson, an American who lives in Belfast, argues that the American civil rights movement of the 1960s activated the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland to demand full economic and political rights. Stevenson's dramatis personae are Republican and Ulster Protestant paramilitary prisoners and veterans of the violence that has claimed some 3,000 lives. Most have matured in prison and regret their youthful violence, while many are now active in community service. At the peak of the bloodletting, active paramilitaries never numbered more than 1,000 on each side, but the attacks could not go on without support from sympathizers in the community. Ironically, Stevenson finds that religious differences are not as important as a cause of conflict as political orientation and the romantic lure of revolutionary activity. The vast majority of both Catholics and Protestants shunned the gunmen and abhorred the outrageous killings committed by both sides: The author cites as particularly outrageous the 40,000 Catholics driven out of homes burned by Protestant bombs and many IRA assassinations. The presence of British soldiers in the province worsened the conflict. In particular, the use of torture and other brutalities by the British, and the killing of 14 Catholics in Derry in January 1972 by British soldiers exacerbated the conflict. When the IRA struck back at the British military, they became folk heroes in the Catholic community. Stevenson is optimistic about the future, as he points out that the majority of both Ulster Protestants and Catholics want to live in peace and share similar economic challenges in an area in which unrest has prevented needed investment and job growth. Stevenson succeeds in providing a learned, evenhanded report that concludes with hope for a passionate people bedeviled by ancient rivalries.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-82745-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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